


Another Fine Mess

by timeheist



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 01:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2369534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeheist/pseuds/timeheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor, always one to enjoy a good enigma and a pretty face, thought he might be in love. The second that Robin had started to piss him off spectacularly, he'd known it was true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Fine Mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TARDIS_stowaway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TARDIS_stowaway/gifts).



> Written for the [500 Prompt Meme](http://the-redjay.livejournal.com/384133.html) 458\. Another fine mess.

“Now look what you've done!”

The Doctor never learned. Companions, he should have known by now, should fit into one of two categories; sex, or adventure. If he tried to have his cake, and eat it – sometimes literally, some of the women had liked that, he remembered – things went wrong, and usually, because of the adventure, not the sex. The adventure, of course, being the more dangerous place for things to go wrong... especially where Robin Hood was concerned.

The thing was, he wasn't actually supposed to exist! He was supposed to be nothing more than a myth, a legend. A fiction made up by the poor, downtrodden masses to make sense of their miserable existence and think up a hundred nasty ways in which they could get someone else to make the Sheriff or the King or whoever it was they thought was very unfair stuff it. And yet here he was – he owed Clara 'a tenner' apparently, and he was determined to find the sneakiest way in which to pay up for losing the bet, which was to find a way not to have to pay it at all. He gave her free rides in his time machine (he supposed he enjoyed her company but that wasn't the point) after all, so why should he have to give her money too? - defying all logic, straight out of the myths and legends and what have you. He was Robin Hood, copyright, trademark, all rights reserved, right down to the Lincoln green and the 'Merry Men' (though the latter was Clara's fault) and the unnatural ability for dodging bad luck. The Doctor, always one to enjoy a good enigma and a pretty face, thought he might be in love. The second that Robin had started to piss him off spectacularly, he'd known it was true.

Except that because they fought like cats and dogs, in bed and out of bed, neither of them paid the greatest attention to time travelling. Robin wanted to continue his so-called good work across the rest of the universe and make it back to, well, make merry with his men, while the Doctor was more interested in finding something he could show his newest companion – when Clara was off making doe eyes at that Pink fellow instead of letting him try to impress her – that would make him look very clever. The end result was that they usually came to some sort of compromise, a dare if you will, where the Doctor found a situation that it seemed highly improbable Robin could cope with on his own, threw him in the deep end, got them both captured in the process, did something clever while Robin did something snazzy with his marksmanship, and then they would hightail it back to the TARDIS and shout at each other before fucking each other silly.

“Me? If you hadn't slowed us down...!”

“I'll have you know I am an expert in running. This is your fault for insisting on standing and fighting.”

Right now, they were somewhere in the middle of the step by step road to somehow-we're-alive-and-I-really-hate-you sex, maybe step four; the stage where they were both tied up and wanted to be untied for no other reason than to wring each other's necks. At least Clara couldn't see them; neither of them would ever have been able to live it down. There'd been a lot of creeping around to do, and while the Doctor had wanted to sonic all the things to make the creeping easier, Robin had been appalled by the idea that they needed technology to do something he'd been doing back in Sherwood with just his wits and a laugh. Naturally, they'd rounded a corner, walked right into a group of armed... armed people. The Doctor had been primed with one of his trademark clever sentences when Robin had decided to brandish his bow, fired a warning shot over the nearest alien's head, and laugh. Within a matter of seconds they'd been insulted in three different languages and manhandled into the back of a truck.

Robin pouted over his shoulder, his attempts to cut the fancy ropes around his wrists with just a dagger briefly halted by his need to defend his honour. The Doctor only snorted, his eyebrows knitted as he tried stubbornly to think up a way to escape from a moving vehicle without throwing himself out of it with Robin still tied to him. He was having about as much luck as his companion was.

“I was not about to take a slight against my appearance lightly!”

The Doctor muttered something rude under his breath, not sure if he was praying that they were far enough away from the TARDIS that Robin wouldn't have a clue what he said, or that he'd know exactly what was being said and only get wound up further. He was very roguish when he was angry. A bright, livid expression in his eyes, a propensity for increased physical attention and behaviour that reminded him so much of a certain someone he'd known when he was much younger. But though that boy had known fury, he hadn't known joy since the day he turned eight years old, had known nothing but madness and drums and drums and drums and drums...

Robin on the other hand was a refreshing escape. He didn't get excited about the fact that he was doing something that the people of his time found impossible but he got delighted by the smallest things, like a Disney film about foxes and lions who sucked their thumbs, or men in tights (tight tights!) that roamed around the forest looking for fights. Just how Robin had gotten hold of Netflix while in the TARDIS, the Doctor would never know. There was a dark side to Robin, a side hiding some sadness that the Doctor wouldn't ask about and Robin wouldn't tell, but it was overlaid with such ridiculous camp that somehow, he made the aesthetic work, and really, really, really deep down, he was as willing to take a joke as the next fictional character come to life in the most stereotypically literary manner possible. Eventually.

“Only an idiot would wear so much green and not expect to be mocked!”

“You dare impugn my-”

Robin spluttered, and with a grin stretching from ear to ear, the Doctor launched in with a follow up attack.

“Oh I dare. I double dar- triple, in fact!”

Robin opened his mouth with a comeback, and then... took too long to answer. The Doctor frowned, trying to crane his neck to see what Robin had up his sleeve. Had he gotten out of the ropes? Given up on the game? Or had he simply found an ace in the game? As he tilted his neck this way and that – realising with a sudden jolt that all the bumping around the road and groping in the dark, tied up against a sweaty Robin Hood, was doing nothing for either his capacity to think or his will to get himself untied – and finally maneged to get a face full of Robin's hair, the chuckling started. He groaned, loud, and long.

“You are a peculiar man, Doctor...!”

“Don't you dare start laughing! We're in enough trouble as it is.”

“All the more reason to laugh in the face of it.”

“Don't you dare.”

“Oh,” Robin started to laugh. Of course he started to laugh. The Doctor rolled his eyes so far into the back of his head that he was in danger of giving himself a migraine as Robin put on the most raucous, irritating fake laugh that he had managed to perfect in weeks of winding up the Doctor. Unfortunately, it was a very good laugh; or at least, it fulfilled all its objectives perfectly. That's it. They were fucked. They were never going to get out of this truck and the Doctor was actually going to kill him. And if he didn't kill him, well, then it was going to be a very long night! “Robin Hood dares!”

“I hate you.”

The truck rolled to a stop, and the Doctor turned to face the doors as the sound of heavy, metal footprints approached.

“I know.”


End file.
